Sing-Along Nights at Don't Tell Mama

Don't Tell Mama opened in 1982 on Restaurant Row, West 46th Street, and took its name from the Kander and Ebb song in Cabaret. It describes itself as a cabaret complex: a front piano bar, a restaurant and two separate showrooms, so on any given night several different acts are running at once. The piano bar is the heart of it, with singing waitstaff and bartenders, a pianist taking requests and a crowd of theater people after their own shows.

The piano bar needs no reservation; the showrooms sell tickets per act, usually with a cover and a two-drink minimum, and cash has long been the safest way to settle up. Come after a Broadway show, when the room fills with performers and audiences from nearby theaters. Requests from the standard musical theater songbook get the best response. It is unpolished in the right way.